Here are some of the best questions for an employee survey about workplace safety—and a few tips to help you create them. If you want to generate a high-quality workplace safety survey, Specific can help you build one in seconds and start collecting actionable insights right away.
Best open-ended questions for employee survey about workplace safety
Open-ended questions spark conversations and yield honest, detailed responses. They're perfect for understanding attitudes, catching hidden safety issues, and surfacing ideas that multiple-choice just can't reach. In a year when U.S. businesses faced $160 billion in workplace injury costs, getting real, narrative feedback from your team makes a measurable impact on safety culture and outcomes. [1]
Here are 10 open-ended workplace safety survey questions to consider:
What concerns—if any—do you have about safety in your day-to-day work?
Can you describe a time when you or a coworker felt unsafe at work?
What do you think are the most common hazards in our workplace?
How comfortable do you feel reporting a safety issue or near-miss?
If you could change one thing to make your work area safer, what would it be?
Have you noticed any equipment, tools, or procedures that need improvement for safety reasons?
Which workplace safety policies seem unclear or difficult to follow?
What kind of safety training or resources do you wish we offered?
In your opinion, how does management respond when safety issues are raised?
What’s one thing we could do to promote a stronger culture of safety here?
Use these prompts to invite genuine sharing—especially when you want deeper insights than a checkbox can deliver.
Best single-select multiple-choice questions for employee survey about workplace safety
Single-select multiple-choice questions are perfect when you want to quantify attitudes or knowledge, or gently start a conversation. Sometimes, offering clear options helps employees engage (it's less intimidating than thinking up detailed answers on the spot) and gives you easy-to-analyze data. You can always go deeper with follow-ups or open-ended probing. Here are three examples:
Question: How safe do you feel at work on an average day?
Very safe
Somewhat safe
Neutral
Somewhat unsafe
Very unsafe
Question: How clear are you on what to do if there’s an emergency (fire, medical, etc.)?
Very clear
Somewhat clear
Not clear
Not sure
Question: What is the biggest barrier to safer work in your role?
Lack of time
Not enough training
Insufficient equipment
Unclear procedures
Other
When to follow up with "why?" Start with a multiple-choice question, then ask “why?” if an employee picks a negative or uncertain response. For example, if someone chooses "Somewhat unsafe," follow up with, “What makes you feel unsafe at work?” This reveals actionable details and helps you solve real problems faster.
When and why to add the "Other" choice? Include "Other" when you’re not sure you’ve captured every possibility. If an employee selects it, follow up with, "Please describe the barrier in your own words." These unexpected insights often reveal blind spots in your safety approach.
NPS question for employee survey about workplace safety
NPS (Net Promoter Score) is usually associated with customer experience, but it’s hugely valuable for measuring employee advocacy and perception of workplace safety. It lets you benchmark how likely your team is to recommend your workplace as a safe environment—identifying both champions and those with serious concerns. Try this:
"On a scale of 0–10, how likely are you to recommend this company as a safe place to work to a friend or family member?"
For a quick start, our AI survey builder preset can generate this and smart follow-ups automatically.
The power of follow-up questions
The real magic comes from smart follow-up questions—especially when you tap into Specific’s automated followups. These use AI to dig deeper, clarifying vague answers in real time just like a thoughtful researcher would.
Employee: "Sometimes I feel unsafe when working with machinery."
AI follow-up: "Can you share which specific machine or situation feels most unsafe to you?"
Without that follow-up, you’d miss the detail needed to fix the actual issue.
How many followups to ask? Two to three follow-ups per question is ideal—just enough to uncover context but not so many that it feels repetitive. Specific lets you set a limit and allows respondents to skip if they’ve shared enough, so every conversation stays comfortable and productive.
This makes it a conversational survey: By adding clarifying questions that adapt to each answer, your survey feels like a real conversation, not a static form.
AI response analysis becomes a breeze: even with all this unstructured feedback, AI analysis tools surface common themes and outliers for you, saving hours of manual review.
Try generating a survey with automated follow-up questions on Specific and see how much richer—and clearer—your feedback can be.
How to compose a prompt for ChatGPT or other GPTs to create great questions
Creating survey questions with AI is as easy as chatting about your needs. Start with a simple prompt:
Suggest 10 open-ended questions for Employee survey about Workplace Safety.
Get even better results by giving more context, like your company size, industry, and goals. For example:
Suggest 10 open-ended questions for an Employee survey about Workplace Safety at a U.S.-based manufacturing plant with 300 employees. Focus on identifying hidden safety issues and training opportunities.
Then, ask ChatGPT to organize them for clarity:
Look at the questions and categorize them. Output categories with the questions under them.
Next, select the categories that matter to you, and ask the AI for even more tailored ideas:
Generate 10 questions for categories "Reporting Incidents," "Training Effectiveness," and "Equipment Safety."
Iterate until you have a set of questions that truly fits your environment—AI makes this painless and fast.
What is a conversational survey?
A conversational survey is an adaptive, real-time exchange—more like a chat than a static form. Instead of hitting a wall of questions, employees get prompts that feel natural, with intelligent follow-ups that dig deeper only where needed. This approach is way more engaging: surveys powered by Specific often yield higher-quality, richer responses than traditional methods.
Here’s a quick comparison:
Manual survey creation | AI-generated (conversational) survey |
|---|---|
Rigid; responses may lack detail | Adaptive; follows up on incomplete or vague input |
Takes hours to design and edit | Generate in minutes via AI—then instantly edit via chat |
Difficult to analyze free text comments | AI summarizes, spots trends, and identifies issues for you |
Limited engagement | Feels like a real conversation, boosting engagement |
Why use AI for employee surveys? Put simply, an AI survey example is miles ahead for collecting safety feedback: you get honest responses, real-world stories, and fast-turnaround analysis, all through a smarter survey interface. This means you act sooner, prevent incidents, and keep safety improvement continuous. With Specific, both survey creators and employees experience best-in-class conversational survey UX—making feedback easy and even (yes) enjoyable. For more about building your own, check our guide on how to create a workplace safety survey.
See this workplace safety survey example now
Capture authentic safety feedback and drive real improvements—Specific’s AI-powered conversational surveys make it simple and impactful. See how quickly you can uncover real employee insights and empower better, safer workplaces.